NOTES & QUERIES

BERNARD EDMONDS

Who said this? 1. In the majority of churches that I know congregations ignore, or are oblivious to any voluntary.

2. There is a fortune awaiting somebody who will compose a piece of music with a one-bell accompaniment.

3. I believe that if more music of the softer type were used, much of the congregational chatter would cease, members would be too sensitive to discuss what Mrs So-and- So did on the previous Wednesday. Are noisy postludes necessary? If a player can play artistically folk will listen, for they do not want to be blown or perhaps blasted out of church.

Have you met Mr Trillet? He is to be found in the pages of Russell Thorndike's book, The Slype. In this thriller the Dean and Minor Canons of Dulchester Cathedral disappear, together with a Bb Tuba pipe and all the Dean's pigs. The canon-in- residence is old and easy-going, and Mr Trillet the organist seizes this heaven-sent opportunity. Says Thorndike:

He struck out the solemn Advent regime and substituted rollicking anthems and more elaborate services, and in the midst of this noise he caused the works of Trillet to sound louder than any. Trillet in Bb, C major, and F vied with Orlando Gibbons, Walmisley and Goss. 'Praise the Lord' (Trillet), 'Sing Praises unto the Lord' (Trillet), 'O give thanks unto the Lord' (Trillet), were duly sandwiched in between 'O clap your hands together' (Greene), Walmisley's 'Wilderness' (a great favourite of his) the 'Hallelujah Chorus' of Handel, the 'Alleluia Chorus' of Beethoven, and, for no other reason than that he himself enjoyed it - the coronation anthem, 'Zadok the Priest'. Mr Trillet enjoyed himself thoroughly, for he had no interests, hobbies, no affection for anything in life except for the organ and church music, and so in the face of the large congregation he took advantage of the absence of the Dean, Vice-Dean, and Minor Canons, ignored the season of Advent as if it were never in the calendar, and ran a continuous Easter-cum-Whitsun-cum-Harvest Festival.

The complete history of the Snetzler organ now in Norwich Cathedral may be found in the Snetzler book by Barnes and Renshaw, from its first home in Woburn Abbey as a chamber organ for the Duke of Bedford. So far as we are concerned it commences when Mrs Braithwaite bought the instrument from Canon Hopkins for her home, Acton House, Long Melford, and later had it moved to her new home there, Brook House. She records that Mr Sturgeon moved it for her. The Sturgeons, father and son, had a workshop in the village of Hartest in Suffolk, behind The Store, where they did general building work as well as organ- building. They carried out some erecting and sub-contracting for Norman & Beard, and obtained from them materials for their own use. Mrs Braithwaite said that Sturgeon had shown her 'the signature of Snetzler ... very faintly written on the wood inside the organ'. No date was mentioned. In 1910 the organ was installed in St Catherine's chapel-of-ease in Long Melford. Sturgeon again moved the organ. Thomas Elliston claimed in his book that Mrs Graitwaite had told him then that the date of the organ was 1745. This was a mis-reading.

Douglas Brown, an American organ-builder working with Fisk, came to Britain in 1969 to make a survey of Snetzler organs. We corresponded about these, and I was invited to join him on several of his forays. These were very thorough, and included exploration of the interior so far as was possible. At one locality it was clear that the architect-designed case had been erected round an existing organ, and as the curator had disappeared into thin air, Brown decided to carry on with some dismantling of the case. I was alarmed, and said, 'You'll get us thrown out!'

'Oh no,' said Brown calmly, 'not before we have put it all back.'

I could not join him at Norwich Cathedral. His careful examination there showed that the date in the organ was 1748. The tracing reproduced is not direct from the organ, which I have never inspected, but of a copy provided by Douglas Brown. 1748, then, is shown to be the correct date.

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Mr John S. Bumpus wrote:
Your article on the Harris organ proposed for the West End of St Paul's puts me in mind of the series of Sunday afternoon services during the time of the Exhibition of 1851, transferred from the Choir to the westernmost part of the Nave, and an organ was placed in the gallery over the west door. Messrs Bishop & Son wrote that this was an old organ by Gray, and removed from St George's Church, Ramsgate. It had a Great of about nine stops, a tenor C Swell, and an open diapason on the pedal of, we believe, only nineteen notes. It was on hire from April to November 1851, and from the entries in our books seems to have been first put in the gallery at the West End. The acoustic properties of the Cathedral were such that the desired effect was not gained with the organ there and it was subsequently removed to a platform below.
(Unattributed cutting, probably from The Musical Times, perhaps late 1905)

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Alec Brew's, Wolverhampton; a Century of Change (Tempus Publishing) has two illustrations of Exhibitions, showing organs. South Staffordshire Industrial and Fine Arts, 1869, shows one at the far end of the hall. Wolverhampton and South Staffs Arts and Industrial Exhibition, 1884, shows one on the floor of the hall with two flats and three towers, under the central tower the word WALSALL is quite distinct. So it was surely built built by Nicholson & Lord of Walsall. So possibly the other was built by the same firm, but at that date, only a few years after its arrival from Rochdale, where it had been founded in 1816, it would have been under the earlier style of Nicholson & Son. Does anybody know anything about these organs, their specifications, and any subsequent history?

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Burnham Horner gave a lecture to the Royal Society of Arts in 1896. Here are extracts from their Journal and from Musical Opinion of that year, heavily pruned of much verbiage of the period. Mr W. H. Stocks said that he had a Mounted Cornet on his organ (Dulwich College) and he would not do away with it on any account, if only for antiquarian considerations; but it was very useful when he had to play old music. Some little time ago the organist of the Temple had said that he wished that he had the same thing there, but he had done away with it and sometimes was in a difficulty providing a substitute. Mr A. Dolmetsch said that the florid music of Purcell, though exceedingly well played by Mr Horner, was heard to great disadvantage upon so unsympathetic an instrument as the one employed. The organs of Purcell's time had a very light, clear tone, and on one of them the little runs and shakes which sounded heavy and clumsy would have had a very different effect.

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From The Tablet, 31 March 1849

The Sisters of Charity of St Paul ... at St JOHN'S, BANBURY. (R.C.) In aid of the above object, it is proposed to dispose of an excellent CHURCH ORGAN By RAFFLE. The instrument, which is now set up for inspection in the School-room at St. John's, had not been built more than four years, and is in perfect order. It contains nine stops - viz., Open Diapason, Stop ditto Bass, Principal, Dulciana, Twelfth, Fifteenth, Cornet, Sesquialtera, Trumpet; and octave and a half of German pedals, two composition pedals, and a swell of the whole organ. It is proposed to dispose of it in Eight Hundred Shares, at 5s. each. Tickets may be had, on remittance of cash, of the Revd Dr Tandy, Banbury.

The result, but not the destination of the organ, was announced in that publication 23 February 1850:

The Subscribers..... are informed that the winning number is 117. The Sisters of St Paul take this opportunity of thanking the friends who have aided them, and of informing them that they have been enabled to PURCHASE an ancient building known by the name of ST JOHN'S PRIORY for a CONVENT.

It would be interesting to know what happened to the organ, and who had built it. Gordon Curtis, who drew my attention to this, points out that a raffle for a seraphine was also advertised, and wonders how common organ raffles were. Canon W.E. Dickson (Ely) commented that it is worthy of note that, among the stops of the organ built in 1759 (1768) for the Foundling Hospital by Glen & Parker (of Salford), - from the design, it is believed (erroneously) of Handel - the cornet does not occur. We must not conclude, however, that his extemporisations were quite free from the mannerisms to which the cornet lends itself so readily. The episodes for the organ in the overture to Saul and others in the concerti certainly have a strong flavour on the cornet; and I should like to hear them rendered by a modern player on a good cornet stop in one of our fine organs still remaining unaltered - or at least uninjured- by rebuilders. The organ at St Mary's, Cambridge, was rebuilt in 1870, and the larger cornet came into my possession. The pipes are made of very thick metal and have wonderfully tall feet. The stop might be said to be a 'stilted' cornet rather than 'mounted'. The usual mounted cornet was planted on a soundboard of its own some two or three feet above the main soundboard, supplied with wind by tubes from below. This was to avoid congestion on the main soundboard, also the strong penetrating tone characteristic of the stop would not be muffled by any obstructions. For that reason, as Dom Bedos shows, in large French organs, the cornet might be positioned just behind the front pipes. This may explain why, in lists of the contents of such instruments, the cornet is usually mentioned first.

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Andrew Freeman records an organ in the possession of J. Charles Lee, organ-builder of Coventry, which had come from a 'country church' and was named and dated in the soundboard. Lee wrote in 1934 that he had to destroy it because of severe woodworm damage. It has so far as I know never been illustrated; this a photograph from Lee.

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